Need Diagnonsis

[tassod]

Can someone diagnose this for me please so i can know what i am dealing with? Think its velvet but not sure..

 

[snorvich]

Describe fish behavior please. When was the last wet item added to the tank? Out of water pictures are difficult.

 

[tassod]

Well, this fish is dead, up until yesterday he was eating but he was scratching and had visible sugar like spots on him. He is the 4th one now to die in a week, Achillies, sohal and white tail bristeltooh also just perished. Thought it was ick at first but now seems its eaither velvet or brook. In the process now of getting all fish out....yet again.....

 

[snorvich]

Well, this fish is dead, up until yesterday he was eating but he was scratching and had visible sugar like spots on him. He is the 4th one now to die in a week, Achillies, sohal and white tail bristeltooh also just perished. Thought it was ick at first but now seems its eaither velvet or brook. In the process now of getting all fish out....yet again.....

Timeline and mortality is consistent with velvet. Velvet would have been a sheen rather than discrete sugar/salt like spots. Brook/Uronema would have exhibited peeling skin.

 

[snorvich]

What is your quarantine protocol?

 

[tassod]

Timeline and mortality is consistent with velvet. Velvet would have been a sheen rather than discrete sugar/salt like spots. Brook/Uronema would have exhibited peeling skin.

Before my Sohal died, noticed like a cotton like substance on him, not just powedered spots..the Achillies was basically all covered completely in what looked like ich and then just died the next day. None of these fish though ever stopped eating. For this fish in the picture i attached which is a fowleri tang, he was dealing with his symptoms for a good 10 days at least maybe 2 weeks.

 

[tassod]

What is your quarantine protocol?

Small fish i do TTM and then observe for an additional 3 weeks. Large fish I only observe for 3 weeks and use prazi pro.

 

[snorvich]

Small fish i do TTM and then observe for an additional 3 weeks. Large fish I only observe for 3 weeks and use prazi pro.

Sounds like these fish were acquired from a source that runs a low level of copper. For best results all fish should go through TTM and then at least 3 weeks of observation subsequently; prazipro all fish. You want a minimum of 5 weeks (TTM plus observation), especially if obtained from a source running copper. If there was peeling of the skin, it is likely to be uronema marinum or brook.

 

[tassod]

In the pic I posted, it looks like half his skin is peeled off, I suspect uronema.
If this is the case, going fallow will not help me is that correct?

 

[ThRoewer]

An appropriate fallow period should rid your system of brook, but uronema is opportunistic and can survive indefinitely without fish.
Though uronema is usually not infecting fish if they are in good water, healthy and not injured.

Also it is usually brook that looks the skin is peeling in later stages. Uronema looks often more like holes in the skin with reddish infected borders.

 

[tassod]

So this more likely is velvet or brook

 

[ThRoewer]

It could also have been a bad bacterial infection. It is hard enough to tell those apart from brook or velvet on a living fish but impossible to tell from a picture of a dead fish.

 

[tassod]

Would bacterial kill 4 other fish before him in 1 week?

 

[ThRoewer]

Sure, a bacterial skin infection can kill as fast as velvet or brook, if not even faster. Though usually they come together with either brook or velvet (ich too) as a packaged deal.

 

[tassod]

I usually like package deals but I wish in this case that I would have been left without it.
Everything was going well in the tank, just don't get it. I'm just wondering if some of my original fish that survived a velvet outbreak I had almost a year ago could still have been silent carriers